Chapter 24 #2
She winds and weaves around students, but it looks like dozens just came back from the slopes, dozens more returned from the village, and even more than that are passing through to get to the mess hall.
It’s too congested.
It’s too loud.
The air is too thin.
I halt as another master slips by me.
Novak.
She mutters something in passing, but I don’t hear what, and then she’s gone, out of sight.
But she cut us off.
Serena’s a few steps ahead of me now, but there’s a throng of students between us.
Panic flares in my chest.
I look over the heads for a quicker way to the doors—
And I freeze.
Dray’s eyes glint in the atrium.
Diamonds frosted over in winter.
And for a split second in time, they are looking right at me.
Then I blink, and his gaze has turned away.
From halfway up the staircase, paused on the step with my brother, Dray scans the faces in the atrium.
Beside him, Oliver’s mouth moves around animated, cross words—totally about me.
But Dray’s sunkissed face furrows faintly.
He senses me.
He’s looking for me.
Among the faces, in the horde, he’s searching.
A fright jolts through me like a slingshot.
I shove by a cluster of students, then duck behind a wooden pillar.
I peer around the other side.
Serena is far ahead of me, looking around now that she’s realised I’m not behind her anymore.
She double takes and finds me.
I mouth the word, “Go.”
It’s all I need to do before she turns her back on me and pushes through the crowd to the open doors blasting in the cold, winter air.
I slip out from behind the pillar.
I soothe my breaths, soothe the panic, and start to move calmly through the crowd.
I don’t dare look back up at the staircase.
If Dray is still up there, searching for me in the crowd, searching for my face, then I can’t risk him giving me a second look.
Makut is weaker than the print it mimics.
His sense is nothing like his mother’s. But it never fails to find me.
So I keep my head down and slip around the shoulders, the backsteps, the turning bodies, the rush of those trying to get out of the cold and deeper into the atrium, until I’m spilling out into the winds.
My heart settles as I come down the steps—and find Serena standing on the path, waiting for me.
The breath eases in me, and I rush to her.
The worried pinch of her mouth gives her away under the illusion, the fear writhing in her, too.
But the moment I’m at her side, she whirls around and marches through the parting students coming off the gondolas and chairlifts.
They cut it close to curfew, the stragglers. And though they move aside for us, Serena flicks her wrist—
And the time on the watch is chilling.
More chilling than the winds whistling around the academy.
My breath mists at my face.
Our strides quicken.
Melody comes down the path with that girl, Camila Damalas.
Both have snowboards tucked under their arms, and Camila is chattering on like a songbird.
Eric is not far behind them, Piper wearing a matching grin as his smile moves around words that amuse her.
He locks eyes with Serena, then gives a nod of respect, an apprentice to a master, then does the same with me.
I force myself to return it.
Can’t go shoving him over in the snow.
Not when we’re so close, and the gondola cords are just metres ahead of us.
Serena’s steps move quicker over the mushy path.
A gondola car slides into view, then halts, bolts locking it in place, and it trembles for only a moment before the doors come sliding open.
I falter.
My boots slip—
Before I can lose my balance, Serena has spun around to snatch me by the arm. She keeps me upright, the panic flaring in her now-brown eyes.
Because Mr Younge comes out of the gondola. He turns around to extend his hand… to my mother.
He helps her out of the gondola car.
Once she’s steady on her feet, they move aside—and my father emerges from the car.
Serena’s grip on my arm tightens, a squeeze.
A message.
My throat thickens with a hard swallow as I lift my chin that bit higher, and I start up the path.
The gondola doors slide shut with a bang that echoes even in the winds.
The car moves, it leaves—and the next will be just a minute away.
Serena is one step ahead, tucked to the left side of the path, allowing my parents to pass us by, and they do, without so much as a glance our way.
They march by, tension tightening their faces, and I get the chills just by passing them.
My skin prickles under my blue winter coat, attire that looks different to anyone but me.
The next car screeches to a stop at the podium.
Serena’s pace swiftens.
I have to jog to keep up with her long strides.
Her boots come smacking down on the concrete of the podium the moment the car doors slide open—
And out comes the fucking Stroms.
My insides run cold.
Mr Strom’s sharp face is a fistful of knives, his complexion as pale as the mountains around him.
The look he slides to us is nothing less than misdirected rage. But the glance lasts just a moment before Mrs Strom steps out of the car, a mirror of Asta, and followed by their right-hand man.
The three of them step off the podium, onto the path, and start up to the academy.
Serena wastes no time.
The door starts to slide shut—but she jams her body against it, holding it open.
I lunge for the gap, staggering into the car, and not a heartbeat after, the door whizzes shut.
The winds are silenced.
Neither of us sit.
The gondola jolts into motion, going up the cords to the turnaround a few metres ahead, and we sway with it.
I reach up for the leather strap above my head.
Serena mirrors me.
And for a long moment, we just stare at each other.
We pass the next car as it stops at the podium, and through the layers of thick glass between us, I make out the soft angles of Amelia Sinclair’s face.
It’s as bad as I thought, then.
The whole fucking coven could be headed for Bluestone.
What I’ve done, more than the scrap with Asta, more than the mislabelled gifts, but with the article, is fucking catastrophic.
The shockwaves reach as far as the Stroms, the Sinclairs, and whoever else is on their way.
But the gondolas have a curfew.
And Serena confirms it with, “Five.”
I turn my gaze to her.
5pm.
Her thinned mouth traps in whatever else she might want to say—but her gaze is fixed down at her watch.
It trembles.
No, not her watch.
Her hand.
Her whole arm.
Her entire body.
She quivers, a leaf in a blizzard, with the panic of it all. And it’s not like we can relax yet, either.
We still have to get through the veil.
Past the guard.
Through Edinburgh.
And then…
I don’t know what.
“They will know we are gone,” Serena says. “Dray was looking for you in the atrium, wasn’t he?”
Words fail me.
In answer, I manage a faint nod.
“Why?”
I run my tongue over my dry, cracked lips—the winds too harsh for them. “He can sense.”
The worry keeps her face pinched. But it’s the face of a master I haven’t ever seen so anxious.
The illusion is disorientating, and I don’t like it one bit, so I turn my cheek to her and watch the decline of the mountain shrink, I watch our descent into the village.
There is always a guard on duty at the veil.
Sometimes more than one.
I have had my share of interactions with them over the years at Bluestone, each time I tried to sneak into the village and go through the veil.
Busted every time.
Hopefully not this time.
The gondola stops at the village.
The moment the door slides open, we are stumbling out, and marching down the path.
It’s downhill, sore on the calves, but we don’t break pace until we’re advancing on the shimmer of space.
The guard steps forward, out from the shadows of a wooden post.
Serena—Master Lockwood—strides towards him. But she doesn’t look at him. Her chin is lifted, proud and important, just like the real Master Lockwood, and her gaze is locked onto the veil.
The guard’s brow furrows.
I don’t know his name, but he has stopped me before.
Back then, I was just going home.
Now…
Now I don’t think I’ll ever go home again.
The understanding is a punch to the gut. The breath that’s pushed out of me is ragged.
The guard narrows his eyes on me.
Instinct, suspicion—and it serves him right.
I wonder if his print is the sense.
He slides that suspicion to Serena.
Then he moves, a single step in front of the veil, blocking our way.
My heart clenches.
It pins to my chest, like my breath sticks to my throat.
Serena didn’t see this coming.
I know it, because she falters.
Her determined, purposeful steps hesitate—
And the guard extends his hand. “Papers?”
Serena’s lashes flutter. They are short and blond on the face of the master—but I see the fracture in her resolve.
I don’t think.
I just act.
I unloop the bag strap from my shoulder. My voice comes and it almost startles me. A man’s voice, “One moment.”
His suspicions don’t fade, but they do drop enough that he lowers his hand and waits as I unzip the side pocket on the bag.
I don’t have papers.
I didn’t know masters needed them to leave.
Neither did Serena, apparently.
But I hope she reads minds all of a sudden, because I’m screaming at her in mine, do something, do something, do something.
I can only stall for a few moments.
I rummage through the slender pocket, my hand tight in the narrow slot. Then my gloved fingertips graze over the curve of an aerosol can.
I still.
I didn’t pack that.
It’s old. Been in there a while. And I don’t remember exactly what it is.
But it might be all I have.
One prayer of mine in a lifetime, finally answered. Maybe.
Serena is twisted around, facing me with wide panicked eyes, a face of someone who doesn’t know what to do, the look of someone caught and cornered.
So I know I’m on my own with this move.
I tut. “There it is. It’s stuck, wait a moment.”
The guard sighs softly, a faint impatience.
He folds his arms over his chest.
My fingers clasp around the small can.
I wrangle it out.
The guard watches my bag shift as I pop the lid off the can—
His brow furrows.
And the moment it does, I’ve whipped out the can and aimed it at his face.
I don’t hesitate.
My finger comes pressing down on the button, and a steady stream of white mist billows right at his eyes.
The pungent stench of fruity perfume clouds us.
A curse gutters through the guard. His boots stagger back. His head whips aside to escape the spray directed right at his eyes.
Serena is frozen.
I drop the can and run at the guard.
I slam right into him.
He grunts as the path is taken out from under his feet—and we go spilling through the veil.
The cobblestone alleyway comes rushing up at us.
I hear the impact of the guard crashing down on the ground, a grunt, a crack, a wheeze—before a sudden hot pain explodes in my knee.
The cry that ribbons out of me is hollow.
I drag myself off the arching body of the guard, the man rasping for air.
The contents of my bag are spilling all over—and something breaks.
Serena stumbles through the veil, tripping over all my belongings, and for a beat, she just stands there, wide-eyed, and looking right at me.
“Fuck.”
That’s all she says before she drops to her knees and, hugging her arms, scoops up as much of my jewellery as she can.
The breaths are guttural through me, serrated down my chest, and the throbbing in my knee slows me down as I lean against the wall and try to stand upright.
Before I can, something grabs me by the ankle.
I look down at the guard, his grip on me, but the searing redness of his teary eyes and the arch of his chest is weakness.
Serena jangles with the jewels as she steps over him—and brings her boot down on his forearm.
Another crunch, another hollow shout.
The price we’re paying to run.
I wonder, in the song of his pain, if it’s too high.
Then Serena is dumping all the spilled jewellery into my bag and wrangling the zip shut.
Her cropped brassy hair looks darker in the shadowy lane, an alleyway of misery and history, the face of the master glaring at me with urgency.
“Go,” she grits out between her teeth, and her hands clutch my wrists, tight. “Go, go, go—”
Her words carry with us as she yanks me from the wall, and though my knee screams with every bit of weight I put on it, Serena’s tight hold on me doesn’t let me slow down.
Grip strangling my wrist, she drags me out of the alleyway and onto the busy street.
The fierce wind batters into us.
Serena sticks out her fist—and lifts her thumb.
She flags down a taxi.
We just need to get out of this street, now, before anyone else comes through the veil.
I glance around the road.
Big red buses wobble past us. A throng of tourists scuttle after it, their raincoats rustling. Cars honk in the distance. A krum further up the pavement fights her inverted umbrella.
“There!” I jerk my chin to the row of black cabs through the rainy mist.
One has spotted us—it comes down the road, rattling, until it chugs to a stop.
Serena wrenches the door open with a grunt—and I throw myself in.
I land on my side on the carpeted taxi floor.
“Stay down.” Serena lurches in after me. “Just drive!” she shouts at the driver and, after some fishing around in her coat pocket, pulls out the coin purse. From it, she tugs out a ￡50 note, then feeds it through the gap in the security screen. “Drive!”
The taxi lurches into movement.
We don’t push up from the floor.
We don’t look out the window to see if anyone comes out the alleyway after us.
We stay down.
All the way through the city, and all the way after that, we stay down.